Syr­ian govt com­mit­ting war crimes in Aleppo; Jubeir

to the fam­i­lies of for­eign­ers killed while fight­ing for the Is­lamic re­pub­lic, the of­fi­cial IRNA news agency re­ported Mon­day. GENEVA— Saudi Ara­bia’s For­eign Min­is­ter Adel al- Jubeir has said that the Syr­ian regime was com­mit­ting “war crimes” in the north­ern Syr­ian city of Aleppo, which has been ex­posed to heavy shelling over the past nine days de­spite a “ces­sa­tion of hos­til­i­ties” agree­ment in place.

Jubeir said in a press state­ment that “what is hap­pen­ing in Aleppo with the Syr­ian regime and its al­lies’ air strikes is tan­ta­mount to crimes against hu­man­ity and war crimes.”

Ac­cord­ing to sources close to Jubair, the Saudi top diplo­mat had left for Geneva on Sun­day night to hold talks on the Syr­ian file with his US coun­ter­part John Kerry. It had been rel­a­tively quiet in the city of Aleppo on Sun­day af­ter ear­lier bomb­ings killed since the 253 civil­ians dead, in­clud­ing 49 chil­dren since April 22, ac­cord­ing to the Syr­ian Ob­ser­va­tory for Hu­man Rights.

Speak­ing to Al Ara­biya News Chan­nel, Spokesman of the Supreme Com­mis­sion for Syr­ian ne­go­ti­a­tions Dr. Riad Nasan Agha said that the Syr­ian regime cit­i­zen­ship to the wife, chil­dren and par­ents of for­eign mar­tyrs who died on a mis­sion... dur­ing the Iran- Iraq war was de­lib­er­ately strik­ing Aleppo to dis­place the peo­ple and there­fore make it eas­ier to re­cap­ture.

“The world knows that Aleppo, which is the old­est in­hab­ited city in the world, is equal to Da­m­as­cus and per­haps ex­ceeds it. Six mil­lion peo­ple used to live in it. Those were a flame in the Mid­dle East. When you re­mem­ber Aleppo, you know that you are present in front of a his­toric city, which the world is proud of,” Agha told Al Ara­biya. “This city is recorded on the UNESCO World Her­itage, it is the city of land­marks and the hu­man­ity’s trea­sure, it is the trea­sure of hu­man­ity to­day. Aleppo re­ally con­trib­uted to the build­ing of the whole re­gion. Wher­ever you go, you find the peo­ple of Aleppo, the peo­ple of in­dus­try, trade, cul­ture and civ­i­liza­tion.”

Fresh raids in Syria’s Aleppo de­spite bids to halt fight­ing Fresh air strikes pounded Syria’s Aleppo city early Mon­day, an AFP cor­re­spon­dent said, as US Sec­re­tary of State John Kerry ar­rived in Geneva in a bid to halt the mount­ing car­nage.

More than a week of fight­ing in and around Syria’s sec­ond city has killed hun­dreds of civil­ians. Air strikes on rebel- held east Aleppo hit in the early hours of Mon­day, AFP’s cor­re­spon­dent there said, with no im­me­di­ate re­ports of ca­su­al­ties.

Seven mem­bers of the Schen­gen zone, in­clud­ing Ger­many and Den­mark, have in­tro­duced tem­po­rary bor­der con­trols af­ter more than one mil­lion mi­grants en­tered the Euro­pean Union last year, mostly via Greece. The Euro­pean Com­mis­sion, strug­gling to pre­vent the col­lapse of the Schen­gen ac­cord, is ex­pected this month to al­low EU mem­ber states to re­tain the emer­gency bor­der checks, which are due to ex­pire in May, for a while longer.— Agen­cies